Designers from South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, Egypt, Angola, Ivory Coast and Rwanda will gather during the Design Indaba conference from 1 till 3 March in Cape Town. Together with IKEA’s in-house designers they will work on a series of domestic products expected to reach the shops in 2019.

Affirming

‘It’s affirming for the world’s biggest furniture and homeware store to partner with Design Indaba to curate their first African collection, and we have learnt so much from the collaboration to date – the designers and ourselves,’ Ravi Naidoo, founder of Design Indaba and also a speaker at WDCD, told Dezeen.

Curious

‘The creative explosion which is taking place in several cities around Africa right now is something IKEA is curious about,’ IKEA’s design manager Marcus Engman said to Dezeen. ‘We want to learn from this and spread it to the rest of the world. Working together with these designers and creatives gives us the opportunity to do so.’

Engman and Naidoo met last June in Amsterdam when they both were in the jury for the WDCD Refugee Challenge and we’re tempted to think the idea for the Africa collection originated then and there.